DURING the period of economic and political expansion the foreign
policy of Germany was of greater importance than developments
at home, and the reason for this can be seen quite clearly in the
rapid growth of international trade in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, the enormously complicated ramifications of international
finance, generally allied with industry, and in the new conception of
economic power which was rapidly coming into prominence -- the con-
ception of power based on world rather than purely national frontiers.
One must, in order to obtain a just perspective, examine German foreign
policy from the double point of view of colonization and of international
trade.

From 1878 onwards, one could see emerging three great colonizing
powers, Great Britain which was already firmly established, Russia and
France; and many of the political changes of the period were dictated by
adjustments in the colonizing sphere. Thus, Russia aimed at expanding
its sphere of influence eastwards into Manchuria and Korea, south into
Persia, Afghanistan and India, and south-west into the Balkans. To render
such penetration possible, in the Balkans for example, it was necessary to
solve the problem of communications between the Black Sea, the Sea of
Marmora and the Mediterranean, so that any Slav confederacy which
would be built up in the Balkans could be joined to Russia by sea as well
as by land. France extended its control over Northern Africa, aimed at
cutting across Central Africa through the Sudan into Arabia, with pos-
sibly some idea of establishing a French zone in the Middle East. Great
Britain found itself forced to defend its position against Russia in India,
Afghanistan and Persia, while it had to check the ambitions of France in
North-East Africa and render impossible the penetration of France into
the Middle East. Britain was concerned, therefore, to maintain the
integrity of Turkey and strengthen the hands of Japan, while its para-
mount interest, as far as France was concerned, was to develop closer
Anglo-Italian relations. The theory was -- the neutralization of the

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